Libertie's Staff Picks

My new favorite book by Margaret Killjoy! The dialog is quippy and the story is tightly paced with well-played twists. An anarchic spirit flows through the whole story, celebrating the lives of common folks, underdogs, and pranksters in a world where the one thing nearly everyone agrees on is that the kingdom doesn't need another monarch. Don't miss this if you're looking for a smart fantasy with YA-crossover coming-of-age vibes, casual queerness, a well-written trans femme protagonist, ace/demi representation, and a little romance as a treat!

Cox is a masterful storyteller whose writing is humorous and unsentimental. Framed as the riveting story of a revolutionary—from the founding of the Panther's San Francisco chapter, to gun running and guerrilla attacks, to exile and the establishment of the Panther's International Section in Algiers—Cox offers an inspiring call to action coupled with a searing indictment of unchecked power. As a member of the Black Panther Party's Central Committee, Cox offers a uniquely credible examination of the Party's many mistakes, including its disastrous turn towards Leninism.

A combination of scholarly research, cultural criticism, and political commentary, this book reads like An Indigenous Peoples' History in reverse. Chapters are devoted to the successive waves of migrants and arrivants who complicate the narrative of a liberal multiculturalism that emerged in response to the Civil Rights Movement. Dunbar-Ortiz offers sharp criticism of those on the Left who have promoted a "friendly" nationalism that wallpapers over the genocidal settler colonialism at the core of Americanism. The extensive treatment of "self-indigenization," including settler claims to indigeneity and the appropriation of anti-colonial discourse in Appalachia, was particularly interesting!

An impassioned and accessible contribution to the radical catalog, drawing from queer theory, feminism, and abolitionism. Practical Anarchism serves as both an introduction to anarchy and an argument for the relevance of anarchist ethics in daily life, from relationships and workplaces to art and economics.

This is the first book-length history of ARA, the massive network of grassroots activists who confronted Nazis, the Klan, Cops, and the Christian Right in the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Three of the four authors are ARA veterans, but they approach the material with a commitment to sober assessment, celebrating the wins while highlighting the shortcomings. I'm typically a slow reader, but I plowed through the text in three sittings, driven by the energetic storytelling and keen insights. Highly recommended!

This little book punches way above its weight: introducing the promise of family abolition, grappling with the polarizing emotions such a proposition elicits, arguing against the tendency to exempt certain kinds of families, and surveying the history of family abolitionism in the English-speaking world. A delightfully readable text, Lewis explores ideas with the benefit of someone who has considered and argued over them for years, pulling from a vast constellation of radical thought including French utopians, Bolshevik commissars, second wave feminists, Black scholars, and transgender Marxists.

When I read Prison By Any Other Name, I knew that it was one of the most important books of 2020. In fact, if you read only one work of nonfiction this year, please consider this brilliant exploration of "alternatives" to policing and incarceration! It's a meticulously researched exploration of popular reforms that centers the stories of real people to craft a highly readable but utterly devastating critique. Importantly, it also offers transformative, community-based solutions.

Kadalie draws from the historic record, recent archaeological discoveries, and his own movement experience to explore the idea of “intimate direct democracy” through two relatively-unknown experiments in human freedom. While the history itself is fascinating, the book shines as a result of the author’s wry commentary and political insights. Kadalie detours into reflections on the social ecology of swamps, provides a new vocabulary, and critically examines the role of charismatic leaders. A great read alongside Dixie be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South!

A speculative horror that reads like The Walking Dead meets SCUM Manifesto, this book is not for everyone. It probably isn't for you. Easily the most transphobic thing I've ever read and packed with over-the-top violence, Felker-Martin has crafted something truly degenerate yet undeniably brilliant.

This book grabbed me with it's subtitular promise to connect digital technology and radical histories including the Paris Commune, a short lived but influential experiment with anarchism in 1871. The author skillfully critiques the enclosure of the digital commons by corporations and billionaire "thought leaders," drawing on a rich history of philosophy, social struggle, and experimentation to address familiar issues often wrongly framed as having no historic precedent. An ambitious book with insights for technologists, activists, and the rest of us, living our lives in silicone cages!

Roanhorse has developed a pre-Columbian setting with a unique mythos and political order that starts out reading like historical fiction and gradually introduces fantastical elements including mythical beasts, enchanted humans, and multiple magic systems. Queerness and nonbinary gender are casually woven into the storytelling, and I was particularly delighted by the depiction of a sapphic seafaring clan, the Teek, who injected a streak of misandrous humor. Strongly recommended for fans of The Broken Earth Trilogy and The Raven Tower!

With journalistic thoroughness, Laursen explores competing understanding of the State, their relationship to concepts such as government and nation, variations on the State model, the interdependence between capital and State, the consequences of statism, and the basis for opposition to it. This accessible book offers new ideas and digressions at each turn. Abolitionists may find Laursen's treatment of surveillance and policing particularly useful. Recommended in conjunction with Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms by Victoria Law and Maya Schenwar.